1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an IP-based network system, and more particularly to an IP-based network for broadcasting TV programs from a server end to client ends.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of networking communications technology, many people's daily lives are closely related to the Internet/Intranet business and are significantly impacted by the Internet/Intranet technology's evolution and revolution. More and more people use the Internet/Intranet and even access/browse the Internet/intranet in their daily lives, whether for work, entertainment, shopping, or education, etc. The Internet/Intranet is creating new economical activities, which are altering people's traditional way of living.
It's known that IP-based TV systems were proposed several years ago. IP-based TV system provide people the possibility of watching TV programs via internet/intranet at a location, such as at home, by using only a regular PC with software installed or a specific device (e.g. set top box). Although people may watch video contents (e.g. television shows or programs), which have been broadcasted over the internet/intranet, however, most IP-based service providers do not guarantee the quality of video contents to users. In addition, most of the local telecom carriers, on-line TV providers, and web-site companies provide the video content in their own mother or familiar languages rather than other foreign languages; for example, all the Asian Americans are difficult to receive the high quality of Asian TV programs which are originally broadcast in Asia.
In current network environments, there is wide interest for users to receive such TV programs as TV programs provided by Internet content providers in a faster way. However, referred to FIG. 1, the conventional client/server network architecture does not fulfill the user's needs due to lack of available bandwidth of the network and heavy workload of the central server. In case of network traffic congestion, when a particular video content is being accessed by many users, it will take much time for downloading the complete video content from the central server.
To sum up, referred to FIG. 1 for illustrating a conventional IP-based TV system. The IP-based TV system 10 includes a TV content broadcasting center 11 is responsible to deliver the TV programs to the client players via the Internet or intranet. It's no doubt that the IP-based TV system 10 serves the customers with English-spoken video contents. If the non-English native customers desire to receive the non-English TV programs from the system, for example, one Chinese user accesses to the client player 13, one Korean user accesses to the client player 14, and one Japanese user accesses to the client player 15, for being desirous of watching their own native TV programs delivered from the TV content broadcasting center 11, the system will get trouble in selection of different language types of TV programs so that the user needs cannot be satisfied.
A prior art of U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,400 has disclosed an approach to providing an image communication/bidirectional broadcast system such as a broadband ISDN or a cable television, and in particular, to an advertisement or commercial base bidirectional broadcast system capable of coping with various needs of subscribers for programs and advertisement. This art does not solve when a user away from home is desirous of watching his/her hometown TV programs during his/her traveling period.
A prior art of U.S. Pat. No. 6,973,667 has disclosed an approach to delivering media program contents to customers through multicast or unicast, and wherein a multicast delivery unit and a unicast delivery unit will deliver the data packets for the media program to customers in multicasting and unicasting fashions, respectively. Moreover, the art is to provide the time-shifting feature such as TV programs recording in the client sides. However, this art does not solve the time zone issues when the customers desire to watch the overseas TV programs in the same broadcast time schedule as it is broadcast in the originating time zone like East Asia regions.
A prior art of US patent No. US20030097661 has disclosed a system for providing IP centric, multi-channel, telecommunication services such as television on demand, video on demand, karaoke on demand, Internet access, and telephone services. However this art merely provide customers with TV programs and customers have no language selections for receiving the TV programs originated by the specific language which is mother tongue to the customers.
In some case, if a user subscribed to the TV program provider would like to watch the same hometown TV programs when he/she is planning to be out of town or travel overseas, it is mostly impossible to watch the same hometown TV programs in this situation. On the other hand, the user may request an agency to deliver his/her hometown TV programs with high quality and resolution for watching during his/her travel period.